How to Work with Denial: A Jungian Guide to Facing Reality

The etymology of denial comes from the Latin that means to refuse. So it sort of is like a refusal of reality. I think we probably all use denial all of the time, by the way. That's too personal to you. Use denial. Right. That's that's except from Joseph. Except Joseph. Okay. Okay. But Is it time for lunch? There you go. Welcome to this Jungian life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day. I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia. I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod. Denial was one of Freud's initial defenses that he identified. That concept has certainly entered the popular culture. We all know that we can see our friends, our colleagues, perhaps our spouses in a state of denial about something or other. It's often very easy to spot in other people. There you go. It's that sense of thinking, if I don't acknowledge it, it didn't happen or it's not happening. And and it's it it's kind of built into our language because sometimes when we get bad news, the first thing we say is, oh, no. So there it is. Yes. Yeah. So denial was not a concept that Jung talked about a lot. And yet I think the idea is still very much embedded in his thinking and it, it is something that we do all engage in. So let's knock it around, see if we could find a union take on it and, discuss what is the significance of denial? So when the Freudians and the post Freudians were, were just lining up this idea about how the ego defends against experiences that it finds intolerable. They created a whole list of observable behaviors that seemed to happen spontaneously. Now we're gonna talk about the spontaneous defense and then also more nuanced stuff. But if we take it in its more unconscious, level, it is a primary, very young defense that is pushing away some unwanted reality before it is even mentally registered. So there is a saving energy inside of us that is monitoring our reality even in infancy, and it is titrating what it believes we can survive. When I talk to people who have had terrible childhoods, and they are now suffering the symptoms of their defenses, by the way Mhmm. We have to have a benevolent attitude toward the defenses. They are like ancient benevolent gods that only have one or two skills to try to throw at the problem, and denial is one of the skills. Like, we don't know what to do, but I can make you not know it happened. Yep. Bam. And then I didn't even know this happened. Nope. Isn't happening. Didn't happen. It's an instant …